Can Solanus Casey Help the Healing in the Detroit Hospital Where He Died?
Cases halved in Michigan: pandemic prayers and minor miracles
Detroit’s Ascension St. John Hospital is a ground zero “hot spot” for a global pandemic and the hallowed ground where Blessed Solanus Casey died.
“In Detroit, cases are down 50 percent,” President Trump said during his April 20 coronavirus briefing. “Congratulations.”
Catholic Men’s Fellowship began praying in front of Ascension St. John two weeks earlier on April 6, as the hospital’s caseloads peaked: 295 people with COVID-19 symptoms. The most severe cases ballooned. Then something happened.
Monsignor G. Michael Bugarin asked CMF to carry two icons, the Divine Mercy Image, and a portrait honoring Detroit’s Blessed Solanus Casey, (1870–1957). Solanus is known for interceding in Detroit.
Between April 6 and April 20, the number of COVID patients dropped 38 percent to 184.
The hospital had 63 patients on ventilators when CMF began praying. The number grew to 72 on April 14. By April 20, it dropped to 55.
Why are the numbers falling?
Is everything changing because of people, God, or both? New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo insisted, “The number is down because we brought the number down. God did not do that. Faith did not do that. Destiny did not do that.’’
Ascension St. John, on Detroit’s east side, is a Catholic hospital. Many believe we can’t achieve anything on our own. We pray, calling out to believers. We call on each other and on saints like Solanus Casey to intercede.
Michiganders have done this for centuries. Father Gabriel Richard (1767–1832) gave Detroit its “rise from the ashes” motto after a fire burned everything to the ground. He died ministering to victims of the dreaded cholera epidemic. Many are certain Solanus carries on that tradition.
“God’s presence here … feel His peace … calmness’’
“I can tell you that I feel God’s presence here,” health care worker Melissa Gaines wrote. “Not just in the building, but with all the employees I have crossed paths with inside this building. I can also feel His peace here. Like an overwhelming calmness in the atmosphere.’’
Seventeen months ago, Detroit celebrated the beatification of Solanus Casey at the most enormous Catholic Mass in Detroit since St. John Paul the Great visited in 1987.
Sitting with a Saint
One morning before the pandemic, I sat in Detroit’s Solanus Casey Center watching wave after wave of people, all coming to pray at the tomb of Blessed Solanus Casey.
The pilgrims each fell to their knees, prayed, and wrote requests on little pieces of paper, folding them up, placing them near the holy man’s casket while praying for things like miracle cures, jobs, and an end to pains.
More than 6,000 requests and growing
Blessed Solanus tripled the capacity of Detroit’s Capuchin soup kitchen during the Great Depression and fed the faithful with miracles his whole life. Thousands visited his Church. More than 8,000 attended his funeral.
From 1924–45, he served as a “doorkeeper,’’ filling seven notebooks with more than 6,000 requests he received from people coming to St. Bonaventure. His notes cite 700 who returned, cured of everything from cancer to blindness, tuberculosis, arthritis, and leukemia. Older people today describe how he touched them or people they know and healed them or relatives.
Did Solanus Casey save Chevrolet?
In 1925, Chevrolet was flirting with bankruptcy when Chevy worker John McKenna, invested 50 cents in his career, asking Father Solanus to celebrate a Mass for Chevy. Two nights later, Chevy got an order for 45,000 vehicles.
Just two years after Father Solanus prayed, Chevy “caught’’ arch-rival Ford. For 19 years, Ford dominated U.S. auto sales with its Model T. Chevy broke Ford’s streak in 1927 and 1928. Ford regained the lead in 1929 and 1930. Then, Chevy sales beat Ford for 44 out of 47 years between 1931 and 1986.
Often, a greater good becomes possible when we receive something we don’t want. At 17, Casey was one of the first streetcar conductors in the nation. In 1891, he saw a drunk man blocking the tracks, attacking a woman and threatening her with a knife. The gruesome scene pushed Casey toward faith.
God didn’t make his vocation easy
Young Solanus, then known as Barney Casey, struggled as a student, particularly with foreign languages. He had to settle for being a “simplex priest,’’ meaning he was unable to preach homilies or hear confessions.
Casey’s humbling became a gift, allowing him to spend more time counseling the sick and needy. Recognizing God has other plans, he didn’t always offer cures or tell people what they wanted to hear.
A miracle that passed the Church’s rigorous scientific tests:
On September 12, 2012, Pamela Medina Zarate was one of those Solanus Casey Center pilgrims, flying to Detroit from Central America at the urging of Capuchin friars who had visited her parish in Panama City, Panama. When she first saw the oak casket, she asked if it was a table.
Pamela joined the other faithful, praying, filling out 14 pieces of paper with prayer requests.
As Zarate stood up, she felt a voice ask, “What do you need for you?”
She got back on her knees and prayed for “mercy,” thinking for an instant of the genetic skin disorder, ichthyosis that caused the skin on her arms, legs, and head to thicken and scale, crack and bleed throughout her life.
Intense Heat. Father Solanus Casey suffered from a different skin disorder, psoriasis. As Zarate knelt, she felt extreme heat from her legs. Soon, she found herself shedding scaly patches of skin.
Her remaining skin was “baby smooth.’’ The signs of her incurable lifetime genetic condition were gone. The case was scrutinized for more than five years going all the way up to Pope Francis. He became Blessed Solanus Casey before a Detroit football stadium with more than 66,000 in attendance. Archbishop Allen Vigneron told the Detroit Free Press, “I am quite confident it’s a miracle.’’
At the beatification Mass, I spotted Beth Hool. She was sitting front and center with the Casey family. Soon after, I learned of her amazing “miracles that never stopped,” for Beth, her parents, grandparents, and this great Detroit priest:
- All of Beth’s grandparents knew Father Solanus. At an early age, Beth’s dad damaged his vocal cords (specialists said the condition was permanent), so they took him to Father Solanus (who knew he would get better on the ride home).
- Father Solanus told Beth’s other grandparents (her mom’s parents) to name Beth’s mom Dolores. Doctors told her not to have any more children, or she’d wind up in a wheelchair. Father Solanus knew Beth’s mom Dolores would have five more kids and never be in a wheelchair.
- Beth’s parents founded the Solanus Casey Guild after his death in 1957, and Beth started praying to him as a 6-year-old girl, praying for a younger brother who wasn’t expected to live through the night. After those prayers were answered, her relationship with the soul of Solanus Casey intensified. A ripple effect followed.
- Beth has many of her own stories since she now works with his Capuchin order to heal the sick. In 2012, Beth and Brother Richard Merling, a relative of Blessed Solanus who carries on his work, brought Blessed Solanus’ “True Cross Relic,’’ to Salvatore, a high school student who had been beaten unconscious with a baseball bat. Brother Richard placed the relic against Salvatore’s forehead repeatedly. Nothing happened.
A nurse grew impatient with the praying Catholics. Suddenly, Beth felt heat throughout her body and had a feeling something was happening. Salvatore raised his right hand, and the monitors began registering brain activity again. Three days later, Salvatore opened his eyes. Five years later, Salvatore attended the beatification of Blessed Solanus.
The Ice Cream Miracle
On a scorching summer day in 1941, a young friar with an aching tooth (heading to the dentist) asked for Father Solanus’ blessing. Father blessed him. Then a lady arrived with two ice cream cones. Father Solanus thanked the lady then put the two cones in his desk drawer. Yes, his desk drawer.
Later, the young friar returned, his toothache healed. Father Solanus said it was time to celebrate, opened his drawer, and out came three perfect ice cream cones. He’s only only put two ice cream cones in the desk and somehow, these ice cream cones resisted the summer heat.
Solanus Casey: “Death can be beautiful if we make it so.’’
“Let us thank God ahead of time for whatever He foresees is pleasing to Him,’’ Father Solanus wrote.
Father Solanus arrived at St. John Hospital on May 15, 1957, in great pain from severe erysipelas (skin eruptions). No matter how much he hurt in those weeks at the hospital, he continued to praise and thank God for his illness, offering to intercede for others.
“Father Solanus spent the last days of his life at St. John Hospital, where I worked,” Rosellen Loye-Bucy of Almont, wrote The Michigan Catholic. “An aura of holiness surrounded him almost visibly. When one of the sisters who was attending to him asked where he hurt, his reply was almost automatic: ‘Oh, I hurt all over — thanks be to God.’’’
The day before he died at Ascension St. John Hospital, he told a friend, “Tomorrow will be a beautiful day… I am offering my sufferings that all might be one. Oh, if only I could live to see the conversion of the whole world.”
Each day, the CMF men pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which Jesus gave to St. Maria Faustina Kowalska in the 1930s. Its key phrase: “For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole wide world.’’ The CMF men have prayed for a list of intentions, including worldwide conversions.
On July 31, 1957, a dying Father Solanus Casey opened his eyes, reached his arms upward, and declared, “I give my soul to Jesus Christ.”
Prayer to Blessed Solanus Casey
O God, I adore You. I give myself to You. May I be the person You want me to be, and May Your will be done in my life today. I thank You for the gifts You gave Father Solanus. If it is Your Will, bless us with the Canonization of Father Solanus so that others may imitate and carry on his love for all the poor and suffering of our world. As he joyfully accepted Your divine plans, I ask You, according to Your Will, to hear my prayer for… (your intention) through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. “Blessed be God in all His Designs.”
“I am offering my sufferings that all might be one. Oh, if only I could live to see the conversion of the whole world,” — Blessed Solanus Casey at Ascension St. John Hospital.
Sources and further reading:
Holy Life, Holy Death, a Look Back at Solanus Casey.
Fr. Solanus’ last days: An ‘aura of holiness’ and suffering lifted to God.
